Dukakis Urges Halt to Dumping Sludge at Sea : Says Reagan Took Office Aiming to Destroy EPA, Depriving It of Commitment to Tackle Problem

In a venerable summer holiday tradition, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis spent a scorching Sunday afternoon on the water, cruising on a party boat off the Jersey shore.

But while most of the nation’s boating population headed to sea in search of salt spray or a stiff breeze, Dukakis--seeking to stake a claim on yet another general election issue--went looking for sewage.

A mile off Asbury Park, he found it.

“There is nothing quite like coming out here and looking at brown water to impress one about what has to be done,” Dukakis told reporters on the swaying deck of the Miss Belmar. “ . . . It is pretty disgusting.”

Under waiver from the Clean Water Act, barges from New York still haul processed sewage--or sludge--for dumping 106 miles off the New Jersey coast. Environmentalists believe that much of that sludge and other garbage is dumped within the prohibited area, contributing to a grisly assortment of human and hospital waste that washes up periodically on the state’s beaches.

Dukakis, aiming a political message at a variety of audiences, called for a halt to offshore dumping “as soon as possible” and demanded that federal enforcement be accelerated to crack down on illegal dumpers.

The statement served as yet another partisan blast at the Reagan Administration, which Dukakis charged “came into office determined to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency” and deprived the agency of the commitment to tackle the problem of offshore dumping.

The focus on dumping also addressed what the campaign’s state director, Tom Cosgrove, said is the “issue most on the minds of New Jerseyans,” serving as a potential lure to the “Democratic defectors” the campaign hopes to bring back in the fold in what is expected to be a closely contested general election contest in the state against Vice President George Bush.

“This is a state that has a picked-on attitude,” Cosgrove said. “And what angers people most is when they come down to the shore and they can’t go in the water.”

Dukakis stuck to the theme at a campaign barbecue in Linden later Sunday, saying: “If we can’t have clean beaches and an attractive coastline and an ocean that we can swim in, then what is life about anyway?”

Clad uncharacteristically casually in a polo shirt, khakis, jogging shoes and sunglasses, Dukakis also sounded an unusually pious tone.

“There is nothing more important and more precious in the world than the shoreline and the beach and the water and the ocean,” he said at both campaign events. In Linden, he described the ocean as “one of God’s great creations” and hoped people might continue to “enjoy what God has put here.”

But in appealing to New Jersey voters, Dukakis stopped short of siding with state legislators in calling for a halt to offshore dumping by 1991, saying: “There is no sense in imposing deadlines that can’t be met.” Aides acknowledged that that position reflected a backward look toward New York, where the question of a forced modernization of sewage treatment facilities might be politically sensitive among Democratic voters.

He nevertheless called for an ambitious, long-range modernization program for the nation’s waste treatment facilities, equating the urgency of the matter with the nation’s need after the oil embargoes of the 1970s to become less gluttonous of energy.

He acknowledged that improved facilities would be costly, but suggested that they be funded with user fees rather than new taxes, a policy that would focus the burden on residential and industrial users in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston, all of which still dump sewage sludge offshore.

Under a court-ordered cleanup of the Boston Harbor, Boston has been given permission to continue dumping until 1991, the result in part of a decision by Dukakis’ first gubernatorial Administration to delay its own cleanup plan.

Dukakis said Sunday that he had learned a lesson from that experience, and fended off a questioner who wondered whether Massachusetts had handled the sewage problem better than New Jersey.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” Dukakis said.